Guns and roses at Crawford town meetings

Council meetings in this town of around 400 are usually boring, businesslike sessions with about three people in the audience — mostly the local media. But over the past month, citizens have been cramming in to cuss and discuss the issue of whether medical marijuana should be sold in town.

And some have allegedly been armed or have given the appearance of coming in with more than verbal ammunition.

The uptick in action at the usually sleepy Crawford meetings began early in February when the council voted to outlaw a medical marijuana dispensary, riling a local provider. In a bizarre session that attendees still have trouble explaining, medical marijuana provider Jay Ziegler showed up with a box of yellow roses and an empty bullet box. He talked about it not being appropriate to pull out a bullet box in a town meeting. Then he attempted to give yellow roses to various council members from the other box. They refused the flowers.

Council members were so unnerved by the incident that they asked sheriff’s deputies to set up security equipment outside town hall to check everyone for weapons at the next meetings dealing with medical marijuana.

Deputies didn’t find any weapons after scanning everyone, according to Delta County Sheriff Fred Mckee, even though there had been reports several citizens had come to a previous meeting packing heat. So the sheriff was able to pack up his security wands and take down the sign that warned attendees not to bring guns into the council meeting.

A business-as-usual mode is retuning now that the town’s ordinance banning medical marijuana sales goes into affect this week. Crawford town clerk Jackie Savage said she thinks the meetings will go back to normal — just a few reporters in the audience and citizens able to carry concealed weapons into the sessions if they please.

“We’re not a federal or a state building,” she said, “So weapons can be in here.”

Ziegler did not attend the last meeting, nor did he appeal the town’s ban on medicinal pot.

Nancy has been covering the diverse news of Western Colorado for three decades, since she migrated to the mountains from the plains of Nebraska. For the past 13 years, she has been a staff writer for The Denver Post, working from a bureau office in Grand Junction. In her spare time, she's been completing a Spanish Literature degree at Mesa State College in Grand Junction and continuing her quest to bike every pass in Colorado.